I don’t write that much articles, but I felt like I had to say something about this issue. Those who frequent my blog probably should know that I’ve been annoyed with this issue for a long time.
Yesterday, I saw the first episode of an anime called Rakugo Tennyo Oyui. Ever heard of it? Nope? That’s what I thought. I missed it as well. It’s a series which aired during this year’s winter season. I originally thought that the creators delayed it, and that it never aired in the first place. Guess what? It did air, it finished after 12 episodes and only one sub has come out so far. But as that one was entirely neglected, the fansubbers gave up after only one episode. Well then. Does Rakugo Tennyo Oyui deserve to be neglected so much? Is it really so bad that people don’t want to even touch it? Of course not. It’s a perfectly fine light-hearted mahou shoujo with comedy elements. There were only one or two annoying characters, apart from that, the rest of the characters were very interesting to see. Especially the way they interacted with each other.
Rakugo Tennyo Oyui isn’t the first anime to be so horribly neglected. I originally thought that Makai Senki Disgaea was ignored, but at least this series got all its episodes subbed. There are much worse cases of ignored anime. Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, for example. It’s a truly excellent series, but almost nobody could find out, as only one episode has come out subbed. Himawari? An actually nice, inspiring slice-of-life series about a ninja academy. It’s few attempts at comedy also were very good and the series sparkles in character development.
Shoujo Yang Geum no Yume? great adventure series about a girl who loves cooking. This one also just got one sub. Kirarin Revolution? A semi-serious story about a girl chasing down her dreams to become a pop idol. Nothing wrong with that. Despite its annoying elements, I enjoyed watching the only two subs which came out. Hime-Sama Goyoujin? A perfectly fine comedy anime about idiots acting stupid. Great if you don’t want to think about anything. Yoshinaga-Chi no Gargoyle turned out to be hilarious, but because there were only two subs which came out, this series got horribly neglected as well.
My point is, that each of this series ranges from good to awesome. None of them deserves the treatment it’s got. Now, let’s take a look at the really bad series, shall we? Coyote Ragtime Show was fully subbed, almost right after it aired and id had three fansub groups working on it. It’s the same with Zero no Tsukaima. Yoake Mai Yori Ruri-Iro na got its first two episodes subbed right after they aired by two fansub groups. Mamoru-kun ni Megami no Shukifu wo also has two groups working on it. Shounen Onmyouji also got subbed in less than a week after it came out. Same with Tokimeki Memorial, Gift and Love Dol.
Now, let’s take a look at the popular series. Both Kanon and Death Note have a massive SIX fansub groups, working on them at the same time. It doesn’t matter whether they’re good shows or not good show, six fansub groups is way too much. Two would have been more than enough. And there are more series like this which get way more fansubbers working on them than is actually needed (Zero no Tsukaima, .Hack//Roots, Coyote Ragtime Show, etc).
Notice this trend? The popular shows get oversubbed and because of that, the ignored shows get no chance of being fully subbed, in order to get the attention they deserve. And the annoying thing is, that it’s very easy to actually solve this problem. Take Death Note, for example. Live-Evil and Toriyama World can just continue to bring out Death Note at a steady pace, so that C1 can tackle, for example, Himawari. Desuno can focus on Shoujo Yang Geum no Yume, SOY can work on Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club and Animanda can sub Kirarin Revolution. Same with Kanon. SS-Eclipse and Sprocket can continue with Kanon, so that Shinsen-Subs can work on a show like Jigoku Shoujo or Marginal Prince. A.F.K. can try to handle Rakugo Tennyo Oyui, AQS-Anime can try to sub Yoshinaga-chi no Gargoyle and AnimeU can give Hime-Sama Goyoujin a try. And voila, a lot of problems would be solved. This, of course, is just an example.
I’m not trying to attack, flame or troll the fansubbers in any way. You’re all great people, who bring anime to the non-Japanese community. But I felt that I just had to say something about this. It’s been a trend for a while, and I’ve been getting more and more annoyed at it. Especially when the solution is so simple.
What you noticed is true, but it’s really not like you discovered America. 😛
I don’t think about is as a trend… I believe fansubbers do what they WANT to do and what they’ll enjoy doing. Nobody’s paying them. Guess it’s our fault for enjoying stuff fansubbers don’t…
If you stopped enjoying writing blog entries would you continue writing long essays anyways?
i understand your pain but the fact is that it is probably impossible for subbers to work with each other on what series they are going to blog on. The thing is, the subbers must have interest in it and it’s totally impossible to force someone who volunteers his or her time to do such stuff to do something different, even if it’s good.
So yea, i understand your frustations, but oh well.
*is frustated since so many of his favorite series need to be watched with chinese subs @_@
There is a flaw in your solution. It assumes that the fansubbers will be interested in subbing those shows in the first place.
The fansubbers are not under employment. They are ‘merely’ fansubbing as a hobby, and in order to sustain a hobby, there has to be interest, or it becomes tedious( and it is not that uncommon for translators to just stop midway and leave( causing a limbo due to the sudden absence of the translators)) due to lack of interest or other reasons.
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From what I saw, Zero no Tsukaima and .hack//Roots where only subbed by two groups. Now the current season, it seems like a waste to me for 4 or 6 groups to do only one or two series. It’s like they don’t think the other groups can handle them. But can’t really complain considering the fansubbers are doing it in their own free time and they don’t have to do it.
I understand where this is coming from. It would be nice if there was some sort of fansub communion which could accept delegation of these sort “forgotten” series. But who knows, that’s why they are fan subs, Kamisama Kazoku was subbed by a group with about one person in it; it just takes the right person to say “I want to do this!”
If I was a 2 or 3 year Japanese lang student I’d be all over stuff for the listening skill, but the translation is just one part of it. Even if some of these series has the translations it would help, open-source fansubbing, wha?
I can’t say that your frustrations aren’t valid. They certainly are. But the point that everyone here has made holds very true – fansubbers sub what interest them. I stand here as a fansubber myself and therefore proof of that fact. It’s sad that lots of shows don’t get the attention they deserve, but you simply can’t get a group, or an individual, to work on a series they have no interest in. I refuse to. If I’m not interested in it, it’s not fun. If it’s not fun, it’s not a hobby. And if it no longer feels like a hobby, then I’m going to find another way to spend the considerable amount of time I pour into fansubbing.
The overwhelming majority of fansubbers seem to be in it for one of two things: the fun or the popularity. Translating a series that you don’t enjoy doesn’t sound like much fun to me, and if nobody’s downloading it, then you’re 0-for-2. It all comes down to market forces: without an incentive (monetary or otherwise) to do a show, no translator will touch it. The idea of some sort of fansubbers’ council which would assign shows to each group is nice, but it would last about two seconds in real life.
Sometimes you have to accept the fact that your love of a series is not widely shared. What’s good (in your opinion) is not always popular. I enjoy Uninhabited Planet Survive, but judging from the current rate of releases, it should be fully subbed sometime in 2015 (ironically, there are two groups working on it). I just think of it as an incentive to keep studying Japanese.
I still don’t understand why ONE person in Korea, who has a full time day job, can easily crank out 5 or more anime episode subs per week, and there are at least 7 individuals who does this, while many FIVE person group in English Anime Community has trouble cranking out 2 anime episode subs per week.
yeah, i’d echo what everyone else has said: ppl sub things they like. it’s not surprising that many groups are loving Death Note or Kanon, because everyone is loving Death Note or Kanon. and whilst it is nice to imagine a world where a fansub project manager is distributing tasks efficiently, it’s not going to happen.
the only thing i would add, though, is that in the j*drama fansub community, this is precisely the way fansubs are allocated. it helps that there is one dominant forum for j*drama fansubs, d-addicts: d-addicts enforces pretty strongly it’s fansub rules. This has meant that some groups have dropped out of fansubbing, or have gone to private distribution; but on the whole it works remarkably effectively. it works, though, because d-addicts is by far the biggest j*drama fansub community and tracker.
there are far too many anime trackers and community for this approach to work with anime fansubs, however attractive the idea might seem.
Here’s the thing though. I think most fansubbers would agree that it’s silly to have six groups subbing Death Note. But how are you suppose to tell any fansubers that they CAN’T do Death Note because someone else is already doing it? None of the six DN fansubbers want to give up doing it, they’d want one of the other five groups to stop. There is no authority to tell any fansubber what they should or shouldn’t do, so these kinds of situations do occur.
Sorry I don’t think I can agree with you here. You make it sound as if we’re discussing different TV networks picking up multiple shows instead of showing reruns or something. Fansubbing is something done mostly as a hobby and people will fansub what they are interested. It’s ridiculous to think that you can go to one group and say “We don’t need you to do Death Note, do this instead, it’s more convenient for me”. They will only do what is fun for them to do, and so be it, since they’re not getting paid for it.
It’s true that your post makes sense from the point of a consumer with lots of anime interests, and such. However we are in an online community translating anime from Japan and I just don’t think we can apply those same ideas here.
“I still don’t understand why ONE person in Korea, who has a full time day job, can easily crank out 5 or more anime episode subs per week, and there are at least 7 individuals who does this, while many FIVE person group in English Anime Community has trouble cranking out 2 anime episode subs per week.”
Well, take a minute to think about that. There are many many similarities to Korean/Chinese and Japanese. I would think in that case it’d be much easier to be fluent in Japanese.
When you have a translator whose primary language is English, or any European language, though they’ve been studying Japanese, they’re studying a language that they really have *no* frame of reference for. It’s an entirely different ballgame. There are no similarities to compare with. It takes longer when this is the case, plain and simple.
>>> Well, take a minute to think about that. There are many many similarities to Korean/Chinese and Japanese. I would think in that case it’d be much easier to be fluent in Japanese.
Here are my rebuttals to this.
1. There is a job called simulataneous translators, who have to immediately translate whatever they hear into another language. The time lag between translating from Japanese to Korean and Japanese to English among these professionals are minimal, so for those who have experience translating, the translating time is not that different whatever language is involved. For me, who speaks primarily Korean and English, but do understand a little Japanese, it sometimes is easier to translate a Japanese sentence to English, compared to Korean, for each language has their own emphasis, and there are occasions, Banner of Stars Anime was a good example where I whole hearted prefer the official English translations over 5 different version of Korean subs I saw, when English is much more suited for translating a Japanese Anime Episode.
2. There are 80 million people who speaks Korean and 800 million people who speaks English. Due to West’s fascination with Japan and over emphasis of English in Korea, people fluent in English and Japanese far outnumber people who speaks Korean and Japanese.
3. The Koreans subbers say that it takes 2 to 4 hours to make a sub for a 30 minute episode. One legendary subber, Tosso is his blog name, did the final 3 episode of Solty Rei between breakfast and lunch, the day after it aired in Japan; he had to for final 3 episodes were aired together in the same day. Since he was using a low quality raw to synchronize the sub, which was later fine tuned for other versions of raw, he said it took less than 10 minutes to download all 3 episodes. The combined sub files, which was compressed with zip, was less than 100 kB in size, so it took just couple of seconds for me to download it in USA. The language difference cannot count for more than quarter of time lag between Korean subs and English subs.
I think it is definitely much harder to translate Japanese into English. This is a fact. But I think someone fluent with both languages, and has some experience doing translation probably can translate an episode with live timing in less than 2 hours. I’ve seen people who’ve done it before, and that includes some editing.
And of course, when the Korean guy who translate anime into korean, he’s doing it with a softsub. No encode, no QC, no OP/ED lyrics. There are groups who do that in English, but they get marginalized by the community for some reason and many of them often stop doing it. Soon it’s kind of a necessity to package your raw and script together at least in a softsub-capable container. And if you’re going to do that it takes only a little more effort to make a hardsub.
So, in end, I guess there isn’t enough of English Anime watchers to promote diversity.
But why all the infatuation with visual quality? Judging from the number of downloads, all low quality anime episodes ( 50 MB sizes ) were viewed by hundreds of Koreans. It seems that these people only see the high quality stuff when they have compelling reason to: Haruhi ep. 12 of ‘God knows’ fame had 1GB version that was upload/downloaded in various websites, about 10 days after it originally aired. Why do I hear so much more complaint about visual/audial quality in English world compared to Korean Anime communities?
To rebutt, what’s wrong with wanting higher quality videos? We’re watching animation after all, not listening to a radiocast.
wouldn’t koreans have easier access to buy legitimate dvd’s or even to watch imported anime? so if they have a huge illegal file swapping community like in america, the geographical closeness might warrant attention by the japanese copyright holders and see legal action if koreans started downloading a bunch of high quality eps. or it could be other reasons, don’t know
adhshj raises a point they should consider, but is mostly ignored. Like China, Corruption is rampant in Korea and they only protects copyrights of companies that shows lots of money within Korea, so something like anime is ignored for being below the salt. My recent conversations has revealed that many watch low quality raw and soft subs, and if they like it, they just import the dvds from Japan and play it on their computer for the high quality fix. Since the video and audio is coming directly from the dvd, they have to use a soft sub to aid them with Japanese. Consequently, many subtitle files gets downloaded again when dvds come out, and most Koreans also compare several version of the subtitles to find one they like the most.